Russia to charge Belarus customs duty for oil deliveries

MOSCOW, December 31 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will impose a full customs duty on oil deliveries to Belarus starting January 1 after the failure of bilateral talks on Thursday, the Russian government's press service said.

Russia earlier cited "a lack of directives and authority" on behalf of the Belarusian delegation which led to the failure of the talks to reach an agreement for customs-free oil deliveries to Belarus for domestic use in 2010.

It would release Belarus from paying customs taxes on the 5-6 million tons of oil it uses domestically for the year.

"The negotiations were carried out on a daily basis from December 10. Unfortunately, we have failed to sign the relevant agreements," the press service said in a statement.

Earlier this week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said the agreement could be signed in Moscow on December 30-31. He said that if the agreement was not signed by then, Belarus would be obliged to pay 100% of the customs duties for oil deliveries.

The press service said on Thursday that the Russian government was ready to resume customs-free deliveries as soon as the relevant documents had been signed.

Belarusian officials have been invited to continue the stalled negotiations in January in Moscow.

promotes the use of narcotic / psychotropic substances, provides information on their production and use;

contains links to viruses and malicious software;

is part of an organized action involving large volumes of comments with identical or similar content ("flash mob");

“floods” the discussion thread with a large number of incoherent or irrelevant messages;

violates etiquette, exhibiting any form of aggressive, humiliating or abusive behavior ("trolling");

doesn’t follow standard rules of the English language, for example, is typed fully or mostly in capital letters or isn’t broken down into sentences.

The administration has the right to block a user’s access to the page or delete a user’s account without notice if the user is in violation of these rules or if behavior indicating said violation is detected.